Nearly every website is subject to various privacy laws around the world, including ecommerce websites. If you own or operate an ecommerce website or store, you must comply with privacy laws where your online shoppers live.
If you’re feeling lost in the legislation, this article will go into detail about Privacy Policies, the rules and regulations enforcing them, and how you can ensure your site is compliant with all applicable laws.
A Privacy Policy is a legal agreement that details the personal information a website collects from visitors, and the ways in which that information is collected and managed. It is legally required by laws in California, the European Union, Canada and other jurisdictions around the world.
Protection of personal consumer information is the goal of privacy laws. Because more and more websites are collecting personal information to perform or improve online services, laws have been enacted to control and protect that information.
Your ecommerce store likely collects names and email addresses for customer registration, and address and payment details for transactions. But this is only the beginning.
Your store almost certainly interacts with third-party technologies such as Google Analytics, AdSense or a blog platform or live chat tool. Third party services such as these collect additional information from your online shoppers, such as IP addresses, locations, browsing activities and more.
All of this information is protected by privacy laws.
An effective Privacy Policy clearly spells out the types of data collected through your store, how it is collected, why it is collected, and how it’s recorded, stored and deleted.
It also should provide contact information for the departments and individuals responsible for upholding your privacy procedures, as well as instructions for customers to access, modify or transfer their personal data.
Furthermore, it should give consumers a chance to change, edit or delete their own personal data, as well as the choice to opt out of sharing their data with you.
Whether you’re running a B2B (business-to-business) or B2C (business-to-consumer) business, you cannot operate an ecommerce store without collecting customer data. As such, you are required to have a Privacy Policy to explain your privacy procedures and your customers’ rights to control their data.
A well-written Privacy Policy protects you from unnecessary risks or legal issues that could arise from conflicts with customers over the management of their personal data. It also protects you from legal issues with regulators and third parties requiring you to have a Privacy Policy.